Share this with

This follow-up to Carl Sagan’s 1980s documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage really upped the stakes with state-of-the-art graphics and imagery.

Heaven alone knows what Joey Essex would have made of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the launch of a 13-part journey to everywhere and everything that’s being screened across Sky1, National Geographic and Fox. I get the feeling that the concept of eternity, which is where this voyage headed by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is headed, would blow his tiny mind.

A follow-up to Carl Sagan’s fondly remembered Cosmos: A Personal Voyage from the 1980s, this new version raises the stakes with state-of-the-art graphics and imagery to achieve its goal of imbuing us with a suitable sense of wonder about the vastness and complexity of the solar system of which our planet is but a tiny part. And there was lots to be stunned about.

But there was also the slightly unsettling feeling that all this was science filtered through the Disney paintbox, Tyson’s avuncular presenting style overdosing on the sweet-toothed awestruck until it felt like he’d beamed down from a feelgood cult. Then again, I’m someone who’s always felt sceptical about those so-called moon landings.